Gas prices edge up to average of $3 per gallon on LI

Gasoline prices edged closer to a $3 average for regular grade on Long Island Wednesday and likely are headed higher still, according to government and private energy experts.

Regular averaged $2.947 a gallon in the two counties, the automobile club AAA said - 85 cents higher than a year ago.

Prices for regular at some gas stations are well over $3 a gallon. The Web site gasbud dy.com, which compiles motorist reports, listed prices as high as $3.17 a gallon early Wednesday afternoon at a station in Lynbrook.

The Long Island average has risen by almost 9 cents a gallon in the past month and by about 24 cents a gallon since the recent low in October. Rising crude oil prices have combined with factors that usually cause gasoline prices to rise in the spring, including a pickup in discretionary driving as the weather improves.

Demand nationally rose by 250,000 barrels a day last week from the week before, the energy department said - to almost 9.1 million barrels of gasoline a day - but it still was slightly lower than a year earlier.

Other factors accounting for the rise are scheduled refinery downtime for maintenance and a switchover to cleaner-burning "summer" grade gasolines, which cost more to produce.

"You have this confluence of factors," said Brian L. Milne, a New Jersey-based editor for Telvent DTN, a commodities information company in Madrid.

He thinks pump prices will rise another 20 to 25 cents a gallon by late May or early June and then settle there for a while.

The energy department said last week U.S. drivers can expect summer pump prices to be at least 25 cents higher than now, assuming stable crude prices.

With winter officially over, at least home heating oil is headed in the "right" direction: Its average at full-service retailers on Long Island fell by about 2 cents a gallon in the past week, to $3.096 as of Monday, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. That's still about 51 cents a gallon higher than a year earlier. About 65 percent of Long Islanders heat their homes with oil.